The purpose of this project is to encourage students to express themselves creatively in writing through the eyes of an animal. Students have an opportunity to participate in any number of forums including animal diaries, animal drawings and photographs, progressive stories, nominate your favorite author/illustrator, and travel buddies. There is a link to send virtual postcards to your friends which is a great way to bring children together from all over. The project I will focus on will be animal diaries and progressive stories. With this project, students begin by researching an animal by using the link provided by the webmaster. This link takes you to a page where students type the name of the animal they would like to research. From there students are directed to the google search page with a list of websites. The students participating in this project are also encouraged to visit their local library for more sources of information. After the students learn about their animal, they are then free to write an entry of the animal diary. Each entry is a day in the life of this animal. Students can think creatively and imaginatively while writing their stories. When their diary is completed, they are able to post their projects for others to view. This site encourages the safe use of the Internet and does not publish the last names of children and provides information on copyright laws. The participants in this project are located all over the united states. Progressive stories are electronic stories created by the students and posted to the website. From there students are encourgaed to add chapters to the story.
This project would meet my curriculum goals in the area of Language Arts. In my county, the students in the fourth grade are required to participate in creative writing activities. I would have my fourth grade language arts class participate in the animal diaries portion of this project. This would be a great time to introduce researching skills both for print and non-print resources. Students will use their imagination and their background experiences to create a diary entry for an animal. I was also interested in the progressive stories portion of the project. The animal diaries project also has progressive stories in which my students could add chapters to. The writing is submitted to the email address provided and the webmaster records the children’s writings. This would be a great opportunity to introduce wikis since you can edit the content and add information.
The project runs from 8/01/01 to 6/30/08. I would have my students participate in this activity beginning in November 2007 and spend 4 weeks participating in the project. By participating for 4 weeks, my class could cover have enough time to research animals and create diary entries, as well as add to progressive stories already in progress.